Qazai’s eyes flashed with pain and scorn, and for a moment he said nothing.
“I should have left you in that cell.”
“You don’t have to like me. But I do need you to understand. We have a week. You sell Tabriz. You pay the Iranians their money. If you do that, I won’t tell everyone who you really are. Not even Ava. It will make me feel sick but I’ll do it. And I’ll work out how we stop them killing us afterward.”
Qazai was quiet for a moment; his frame relaxed and he sat back in his seat. He examined his hand, pulled his fingers back until the knuckles cracked and then nodded his head, the faintest movement.
“What’s your plan?”
“I don’t have one,” said Webster.
23.
IT WAS EVENING BY THE TIME Webster turned the corner into Hiley Road, still in Youssef’s suit, bruised and grimy from his long journey, body and mind exhausted. Everything was as he had left it two days earlier. Fewer cars, because it was Saturday, but he glanced inside them all nevertheless, even walking twenty yards beyond his house to make sure that he was unobserved. He had never had to do this before, and it made him feel sick.
Automatically he patted his pockets for his keys, found none, walked up the short garden path and lifted the heavy wrought-iron knocker, trying to find a rhythm that was positive but not jaunty. Inside he could hear voices and light skidding steps and through the glass he saw Nancy’s hand reaching up and struggling at full stretch to turn the Yale lock. The door opened and he crouched down to receive her and Daniel, who came at him so fast he struggled to keep his balance. Both were in their pajamas. Hugging them close, he looked up at Elsa, who was standing in the doorway, tried a smile, and watched her turn and walk down the long hall into the kitchen.
“Daddy,” said Nancy. “Have your trousers shrunk?”
Webster looked down at himself. He looked ridiculous.
“I’m just going to the loo, sweetheart. Tell Mummy I’ll be down in a minute.”
Upstairs in the bathroom he checked himself in the mirror. One eye bruised and spreading black, one merely tired, both bloodshot, neither confident nor particularly honest. He took off Youssef’s filthy shirt, stopping for a moment to examine the bruise that had settled on his side, struggled out of the trousers and put both in the laundry basket before taking a T-shirt and some shorts from the chest of drawers in his bedroom and hurriedly changing into them. In his own, clean clothes, the uniform of his weekends, he forgot for a short moment where he had been and what he had done.
Elsa had finished the washing up and had started wiping crumbs off the table.
“They watching something?” said Webster.
“Yes.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be home for dinner.”
She looked up, then went back to her job. “We’re just glad you could be here at all.”
Webster wondered how he was going to say the things he needed to say.
“Did you eat with them?” he said at last.
“I didn’t know when you’d be back.”
The fridge was more or less empty: some rashers of bacon, children’s yogurts, ends of cheese. Even though he hadn’t eaten since that morning, he realized, he had no appetite.
“Do you want a drink?” he said.
“Not till they’re in bed.”
He found himself a glass and reaching up to the high shelf, took down a bottle of whisky, wincing at the pain in his side.
“You have one, though,” said Elsa as he uncorked it.
“It’s been a long day.”
She didn’t say anything straight away, but ran water over the cloth in her hands and wrung it out tight.
“I thought it was the weekend in Marrakech.”
“Today is. They have the same weekends as us.”
She had turned to him now, her arms crossed. Under the bright kitchen lights she looked tired, too.
“But a good meeting?”
“It wasn’t exactly a meeting.”
“It never is.”
“I was there. I’m not lying to you.”
“I know you were there. That’s the problem. You go to these places and I have no idea what you’re doing. Or what other people are doing to you. Most people who go away, they sit in rooms, they talk, they come back. They get bored. Perhaps they get drunk. Perhaps they get laid. Not you. Look at you. You’re a mess. You bring your shit into our house, Ben. Every day. Every day you might as well come home looking like this. In a stranger’s clothes. With a black eye, frightening the children.”
“They’re not frightened.”
“No? Then why does Nancy want to know why you’re hurt? Perhaps she’s just curious. Perhaps they’re used to you. That’s good. But I’m not. I’m not used to you anymore. I can’t stand it. If you call, you don’t tell me anything. You’re not going to tell me anything now. I know it. Well OK. That’s fine. All I want to hear is that you’ve dealt with it, whatever it is, and that’s it. It’s over.”
Webster hoped that this was their lowest point. There was fury in Elsa’s eyes but what frightened him most was the disappointment he saw there, and the firmness, the resolution. Elsa’s decisions were not undone lightly, and he sensed, with a terror greater than any he had yet known, that she was close to making one that she had long delayed.
But what to tell her? The truth hardly served. If he shared it, she might leave him for his idiocy; if he kept it from her, for his lack of trust.
He took a step toward her, made to put his arms around her. “It’s nearly over.”
“For fuck’s sake.” She pulled away. “What does that mean?” She stood, her hands on her hips, about a yard from him; he had never felt so alien in his own home. He took his drink from the side, moved past her, sat at the kitchen table and drank, the heat of the whisky harsh in his throat.
Trying to make his face as open as possible he looked her in the eye. “It’s been bad. Nasty. But it will be finished. In a week. I have one more thing to do.”
He watched her face for a response but she was distracted.
“Jesus Christ, Ben, what’s that?” she said, pointing.
“What?”
“That. On your leg.”
Looking down he saw an inch or two of purple-gray bruise showing on his thigh, just above the knee.
“Show me.”
With a sigh he pulled up the leg of his shorts.
“My God. Who did it?”
“It was just a fight.”
Elsa shook her head and crouched down to have a better look at it.
“Which you lost, I take it.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Is that it?”
Webster nodded and took another large sip of whisky.
“Lift up your shirt,” said Elsa.
He hesitated, frowning at her.
“Go on.”
She moved around the table as he lifted the T-shirt on his right side.
“My God. What did they do?”
Her eyes softened and she gently touched his cheekbone, at the edge of the bruise.
“God, baby. You need to go to hospital.” She fetched her phone from the side and started dialing. “Silke might be free. I’ll drive you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“It’s just a cracked rib.”
“Ben.”
“I don’t need to go.”
She put the phone down and looked up, her eyes shut and her neck tensed in frustration before she turned back to him.
“Because, what, you’re really tough? You’re a big man?” She paused. “They”—stressing the word and pointing toward the sitting room—“would rather you were less big. They don’t care about big. Neither do I.”
“It’s a rib. There’s nothing they can do.”
“It’s one thing being fearless. But this? This is pride. This is conceit.” She held his eye. “I’m calling a taxi. You can go on your own.” She stood up.
“Wait,” he said. “We need to . . .” He didn’t know how to say it. “I need you to go away for a few days.”
Elsa simply looked at him.
“Start the holiday early.”
She looked down at the floor, shaking her head, unable to say anything.
Webster went on. “The man who did this. We’ve made an arrangement. But I don’t trust him to keep it. I think he will, but I don’t want him coming here.”
“He knows where we live.”
“I have to assume so.”
Elsa sighed. Her eyes were cold. “Tell me,” she said, and her voice was clear and hard, “do you know how bad this is?”
He thought he did. He pictured Rad in their house, opening the door, his hand on the stair rail. He knew what he had sacrificed.
“I do.”
“You’ve brought danger into our house. I can’t have that here, Ben. Don’t tell me you can make it go away because even if you can, that’s not the point. You brought it in. It will never be the same.” She paused. “We’ll go to Cornwall. I can’t be here with you.”
• • •
WEBSTER WOKE IN THE spare room the next morning: four hours it had taken for a doctor to see him, a further two to be X-rayed and dismissed with a prescription for painkillers, and by the time he had returned home Elsa’s light would have long been switched off. It was shameful, but that was a relief. He had slept heavily and couldn’t recall his dreams, but he had a sense that they contained deserts, and unreachable oases, and low buildings in the sand.
For an hour after breakfast he helped Elsa pack, filling bags with games and books and films to watch, making a picnic, digging out the wetsuits and the fishing nets for the rock pools. This was what he did before a holiday. Elsa would pack the children’s clothes and her own; he was responsible for fun. Every item sharpened the guilt.
They left at eleven, and as he saw them off, the children waving frenetically in the backseats, he felt as if it was he who was going away, he who was being excluded from the home. All morning Elsa had talked to him only to exchange practical information.
He watched the car reach the end of the street. As it rounded the corner a second car moved out from a parking space a few doors down from the Websters’ house and set off in the same direction. Webster checked his watch and went inside.
At noon, Hammer arrived, in his running things, covered in fresh sweat, his face patchy red from the exertion.
“God. You look worse and worse,” he said merrily as Webster opened the door. “So you’re all on your own?”
Webster nodded, smelling Ike’s sweat as he moved past him into the house.
“You call George?”
“I did,” said Webster.
“What’d he say?”
“A discreet tail to Cornwall. Then counter-surveillance on the house.”
“How many men?”
“Four. Two shifts of two.”
“Hard work. Is that going on Qazai’s bill?”
“Damn right.”
Hammer laughed. “We making a turn on that?”
“Go into the kitchen. Do you want tea?”
“Water.”
Webster had expected a cooler greeting than this; in truth, he was surprised that Hammer had even agreed to see him. But he appeared to be at his most energetic, and whether that was his recent run or the sheer exhilaration he felt when a situation became particularly intricate and unpleasant, it didn’t matter. Perhaps he felt that Webster had suffered enough. Regardless, Webster felt a great relief at the sight of him, because he would help: see something Webster hadn’t, turn the situation around, dream up some stratagem. That was what he did. But more than that, it was good to be with someone who understood.
As Webster ran the tap Hammer shrugged a slim backpack off his shoulders, unzipped it and took from it a book which he passed to Webster.
“No better book about rediscovering your mojo.”
It was a copy of The Fight by Norman Mailer, an old paperback. From the front cover Muhammad Ali stared out, bare-chested, his face full of mischief and defiance, his hand just curling into a fist; on the back a short account of what he was about to face in the ring: “Foreman’s genius employed silence, serenity and cunning. He had never been defeated.”
“Thank you.”
Hammer took his water and nodded. “Read it. There was no way Ali was meant to win that fight. He was a mess.”
Webster looked at the energy in Ali’s eyes, the certainty that lived there, and found it hard to imagine he had ever felt quite this defeated. “I will. But at least he knew who he was fighting.”
Hammer took a long drink of water. “Tell me exactly what you know about him.”
“Let’s go in the garden.”
The sun was high in the sky and the garden table in full sun. Hammer sat down, stretched his legs out and held his face to the light, his eyes shut, and listened to Webster repeat much of what he had said on the phone the night before: the history of the debt, the extent of it, the very little that Qazai seemed to know about Rad.
“And Kamila?”
“She’s found a bit. Actually she’s done well. Rad lost them on the way back from the airport but she got the car. A rental, from a local firm. Paid for with an Amex in the name of Mohamed Ganem, who also provided a Dubai driving license. The same Amex was used to pay for two rooms at the Novotel in Marrakech. She has the names of the four men who stayed there. Or at least the names they were using.”
“Passports?”
“Not yet.”
“So is he Rad or Chiba or Ganem?”
“All of them. None of them. Rad is the name he gave Qazai. Ganem’s an operational name, I’m guessing. Chiba’s a red herring. Christ knows who he is.” He paused. “I’ve spent the past hour searching every database we have. There’s a company in Dubai registered to Mohamed Ganem, but it’s not an uncommon name. Otherwise nothing. And then . . .”
“What?” said Hammer.
Webster hesitated. “Dean’s working on it.”
“Of course.”
“You don’t mind?”
“No. It’s the lesser evil. It wasn’t before.” He shrugged. “You’ve given him the Amex? Checked the flights to London?”
Webster nodded.
“Who’s checking the hotels?”
“Dieter.”
“On a Sunday? Very loyal.”
Hammer got up to get more water. He went inside, ran the tap for a few seconds and came back drinking from the long glass. “Does Fletcher know anything?”
“No, but he says his friends might.”
“Ah,” said Hammer. “His friends.”
“They’re real. I was going to meet one of them before . . . before Marrakech came up.”
“Oh, they’re real. It’s just that what they know and what they want to tell us are two different things.” He thought for a moment. “Any word on Senechal?”
Webster shook his head. “Nothing. No one of that name is in any hospital in Marrakech.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“Maybe.”
“What about the morgues?”
“Driss seems to think that no foreigners have been taken in since Friday.”
“I don’t understand you sometimes. That’s good news.”
“Perhaps. I’d prefer just to know. Every time I close my eyes I see his face.”
Webster put his hands behind his head and stretched, forgetting for a moment the pain in his side. “So. What do we do?”
Hammer sighed. “Do you think they’re here?”
“I’d be surprised if they weren’t.”
“OK. If we find them? We could call the police and tell them they have terrorists on their doorstep.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“Perhaps they have weapons with them.”
“True. Perhaps they don’t.”
“True.”
“So then what?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ve got a week. Less than a week.”
“I know,” said Hammer. “Plenty of time.”
24.
ON MONDAY MORNING WEBSTER woke long past dawn to hear planes softly droning overhead. Hammer had left him with his favorite painkillers, some American concoction that he swore would work better than any feeble London drugs, and after several hours of bullying Dean Oliver to work as fast as he could he had taken them early and fallen into a deep, dense sleep that didn’t want to let him go.
The first thing he was conscious of was that empty space next to him; he sensed it without opening his eyes. Somehow he sensed, too, before he remembered it, that the house was empty. Lying there now, his head fogged from the drugs, Webster felt his world unbalanced around him, all its delicate symmetry wrecked, and saw himself sliding through it, giddy and out of control.
He opened his eyes and forced himself up, stiff from the pain. A faint nausea lay at the back of his throat; his head hurt; his eyelids barely wanted to open. It occurred to him that if someone was slowly poisoning him this is how it would feel.
No swimming for four weeks, the doctor had said, but he couldn’t help but think that to immerse himself in the cold green waters of the pond—still better the sea—would heal him instantly of this sluggishness, this confusion that was in some ways the hardest thing of all to bear. Even without these painkillers, he had been slow ever since his return from Marrakech, as if his mind, just as it needed to be at its sharpest, had recoiled from the impossibility of its task. If he could just be in the water, the answers might come. Must surely come.
• • •
The Jackal's Share Page 28